A TEMPORARY FUTURES INSTITUTE
27.04.2017–17.09.2017
In the spring and summer of 2017, M HKA will host an exhibition that intends to be ‘more than
an exhibition’. A Temporary Futures Institute will attempt to turn the museum into a
laboratory or studio, and to bring together two contexts that have certain things in common:
art and futures studies (also known as foresight).
The initial impulse of the co-organisers, M HKA’s senior curator Anders Kreuger and
Antwerp-based professional futurist Maya Van Leemput, was to compare their two
speculative domains. Perhaps they are disciplines, perhaps not. How do art and futures
studies relate to knowledge? In art, the concept and practice of knowing is always contested:
sometimes under-rated, sometimes over-rated, often in conflict with thinking and feeling. In
futures studies, the desired object of knowledge – the various futures that might be – is per
definition always absent, because it doesn't yet exist.
Since we want to challenge the museum presentation format, we thought it would be both fun
and sharp to invite both artists and professional futurists (from the sub-fields of Alternative
Futures, Design Futures, Postnormal Futures and Technology Futures) to contribute to and
participate in a common project for a few months. Therefore the title: A Temporary Futures
Institute.
From a curatorial perspective it is interesting to work with futures as an exhibition theme and
to consider the futures of exhibition-making itself. From a futurist perspective it is interesting
to see how artists can create and communicate images of futures and help question the
meanings and methods of futures studies.
As a structuring device for the exhibition, we decided to use an approach originating at the
Manoa School of Futures Studies at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. Since the late
1960s, professor James Dator has been developing an analytical and scenario-building tool
that he calls ‘four futures’.
All contributors in A Temporary Futures Institute are asked to address either continuation (or
continued growth), collapse (in itself but also as a possible beginning of something new),
discipline (whether top-down, as in authoritarian societies, or bottom-up, as in activist
movements) and transformation (with special attention to possible future roles of Artificial
Intelligence).
The intention is to ensuring that each futures scenario is addressed by at least one artist and
one non-artist, and to organise the exhibition as discrete units, enveloped by a purpose-built
set commissioned from the artist Alexander Lee (1974, French Polynesia).
The other invited artists are: Nina Roos (1956, Finland) and Darius Žiūra (1968, Lithuania)
for ‘continuation’; Michel Auder (1944, France/US) and Simryn Gill (1959, Malaysia/
Australia) for ‘collapse’; Miriam Bäckström (1967, Sweden) and Kasper Bosmans (1990,
Belgium) for ‘discipline’; Guan Xiao (1983, China) and Jean Katambayi (1974, Democratic
Republic of the Congo) for ‘transformation’.
Maya Van Leemput (1969, Belgium) is also contributing to the exhibition, for ‘continuation’.
The professional futurists invited are: Meimei Song (1966 Taiwan) for ‘collapse’; Centre for
Postnormal Policy and Futures Studies (London/Chicago), consisting of Ziauddin Sardar
(1951, Pakistan/UK) and John Sweeney (1977, US) for ‘discipline’; Stuart Candy (1980,
Australia/Canada) for ‘transformation’.
The museum’s mediation team has been involved from the beginning in devising the content
and form of the project. Our aim is to attract audiences that are different (and hopefully
broader) than M HKA’s usual followers. We are hoping to involve a variety of groups and
organisations in creating activities inside and during the exhibition, encouraging visitors to
come more than once.
An important component of the project is an international futures conference in Brussels
and Antwerp on 15–17 June 2017. Titled ‘DDT (Design, Develop, Transform)’, it is
organised by Maya Van Leemput in her capacity of Senior Researcher at the Centre for
Applied Futures Research of Erasmus University College, Brussels. Both the World Futures
Studies Federation (a ‘global peak body’ of academic futures studies) and the Association
of Professional Futurists (an international, but predominantly North American, group of
futures practitioners working in both corporate and not-for-profit contexts) are partners for the
conference. On the Friday and Saturday the event will be an ‘un-conference’ inside the
exhibition at M HKA.
A Temporary Futures Institute will open at the end of April 2017 and run until the end of
September. The project is part of the series “The Uses of Art”, funded by the European Union
through the L’Internationale museum confederacy, of which M HKA is a founding member.
Other members of the confederacy include MACBA in Barcelona, Moderna Galerija in
Ljubljana, Reina Sofía in Madrid, SALT in Istanbul and Ankara and the Van Abbemuseum in
Eindhoven.